Suther-spam: Part 1 - Shut up and pay up
It doesn't exactly take the observational skills of Angela Lansbury for one to put together pretty quickly that Stuart Sutherland is a man that is seldom wrong about anything.
In fact, Stuart comes across as so right about everything, some might even label him a bit of a Renaissance man - well versed in everything from the nuts and bolts of commercial construction to the nitty-gritty nuances of accounting and business math. So, the Glen Iris Blog thought it might be educational to take several statements and claims made by Stuart Sutherland at our Annual Meeting and do a little fact checking to see if, in fact, he is as knowledgeable as he would have us believe.
*Note: Many homeowners may be unaware of the manner by which our Association adopts a budget. It's not so much an 'approval process' as it is a 'dissapproval process' - whereby the budget is whatever the Board says it will be. The only way around that is to have the budget disapproved by way of a procedurally improbable scenario whereby members may disapprove the budget predetermined by the Board at the Annual Meeting. It would require a minimum of 56 members to be present, in person, at the meeting (not by proxy) and all of whom are in unanimous support of not supporting the budget for the coming year. Sounds like an attorney's dream come true, doesn't it? It is.
DISINFORMATION In introducing the 2012 budget, the Board Treasurer - oops, my bad - our Treasurer didn't present the budget to those in attendance at the Annual Meeting (I was momentarily confused because that's the way every other Association on the planet does it, but given the reality that our Board is, and has been for years, more or less a clever democratic-looking disguise for the Sutherlands and their dictatorial hold on our Association, Stuart naturally presented the 2012 budget rather than it being presented by Jennifer Keir, our Treasurer). Let me try again. In introducing the 2012 budget, the Board - i.e. Stuart - claimed that the 2012 budget 'holds the line on expenses' and even went as far as to make the claim that, with the exception of the budget item for water and sewer, the 2012 budget contains several items of expense decreases over 2011. (Continued...)
FACT If you exclude the necessary budget increase for water and sewer, the 2012 budget represents a 2% increase in spending over 2011. Further, there is not one single budget item for 2012 where the amount that the Sutherlands budgeted is less than the actual amount spent - or will be spent by the end of the fiscal year - for 2011. Hardly something that anyone other than those who are trying to bamboozle you would characterize as 'holding the line' on expenses.
Perhaps Stuart's false claim that there are expense items that decrease in 2012 over 2011 was not so much an intentionally untrue statement as it was just a simple - if not alarming - case of ignorance when it comes to some basic business concepts.
To propose a budget item for 2012 that is less than the amount budgeted for that item in 2011 is not, by any measure, nor by any yardstick in the corridors of American business, a 'decrease in expenditures'. To put it bluntly, there is no 'savings' whatsoever produced by that act. In this case, Stuart either simply doesn't know what he's talking about or he's intentionally making misleading and false statements. I'll let you decide which of the two it is for yourself.
A clearer translation of Stuart's claim would be that the Sutherland budget for 2012 proposes to spend less of the money they thought they would spend but didn't spend this year. This could be more accurately called a 'decrease in the 2012 budget for 2011 over-budgeted items'. And that, my friends, isn't an achievement that will get you promoted out of the mail room of any business enterprise in this country. So all of the professed 'midnight oil' that the Board supposedly burned - working their pencils and erasers down to a nub to produce the 2012 budget - in reality, boils down to this: they are planning to spend less in 2012 of what they planned but didn't spend in 2011 (whoopty do) and apart from the huge increase in the water and sewer budget, they were so willing to put 'everything on the table' and make some tough choices, that they finally - after much toil and tears - found a way to increase dues another 2% beyond the 13% required by the rise in water and sewer expenses. Talk about out of touch.
And what was the Annual Meeting budget tirade by Board member Erik Moore all about, anyway? I mean how offended can you genuinely be when a homeowner fails to realize - and shower you with credit for - how hard you worked to increase this year's budget over the prior year? Maybe what Erik meant by 'hard work' wasn't the numbers part of the task, but the burden of having to run back to Kit (and Stuart) for her/their blessing every time they changed a digit. That, I agree, would have been a genuinely difficult and emotionally draining task. And you know they (the Budget attack dogs) were micro-managed to hell and back - just look at how fast Stuart used poor Jennifer Keir's head as a step stool to rise up and present the budget. Like it was any less like that during its preparation? Please.
In a time of considerable economic hardship and challenge for wide swaths of Americans and American businesses - a time where even the Girl Scouts are having to make tough business choices - the Sutherlands can't find one single expense item that could be trimmed in 2012 over what will actually have been spent in 2011. But, then again, why would they bother? Their control over our Association coupled with the oddities of our budget 'dissapproval' process means that they don't have to. They can spend - and you will pay - whatever amount they wish.
If you can't afford monthly dues that are a whopping 26% higher than they were just 14 short months ago - or if you simply happen to believe that there are ways we could trim spending without significantly impacting the quality of life here at GIL, then 'that's just too bad' as far as the Sutherlands are concerned. If you don't pay, then they can just as easily foreclose on you and take your unit. Bonus!
Of course, what the Sutherlands are doing is nothing new - it's called 'taxation without representation'. And you know what happened the last time someone thought that they could get away with that forever. Tick-tock. Tick-tock...
Be sure to check the Glen Iris Blog tomorrow for Part 2 of the Suther-spam fact-checking series titled 'Suther-spam: Part 2 - Deaf ears and hot air cost homeowners $10,000
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